The DC Verdict heads to P&J Live, Aberdeen for the opening night of Westlife’s UK tour — and discovers that nostalgia is only half the story.
WESTLIFE — 25 YEARS OF HITS
📍 P&J Live, Aberdeen
📅 29 September 2026
🎟️ Westlife 25: The Anniversary World Tour
DC VERDICT: APPROVED
This review is not sponsored. Tickets were not gifted and all opinions are my own.
“Twenty-five years later, the nostalgia hits hard — but it’s the vocals, production and sheer joy of the show that prove Westlife still have it.”
– TheDylansWorld
There is something slightly surreal about finally seeing a band that existed in your childhood long before you really understood what being a “fan” even meant.
One-year-old Dylan obviously wasn’t exactly queuing outside HMV for the latest Westlife release, but somewhere along the way they became one of the bands that soundtracked my childhood. I can still remember having a Westlife CD stolen and being absolutely devastated.
Yes. I cried.
So walking out of P&J Live in Aberdeen twenty-five years into Westlife’s career, completely buzzing after finally seeing them perform live, felt like one of those strange full-circle moments.
And the biggest surprise?
This wasn’t simply a nostalgia show.
It was genuinely brilliant.
Aberdeen came ready to have fun
We arrived early enough to secure a good parking space — already a minor concert victory — and caught support act Ana Sky, who is accompanying Westlife on the Aberdeen dates. P&J Live
She started strongly and clearly has a good voice, although personally I found the vocal tone became quite similar from song to song. I wanted a little more variation and range across the set.
But even before Westlife appeared, the atmosphere inside P&J Live was obvious.
Fun. Bubbly. Nostalgic.
And slightly chaotic in the best possible way.
I seemed to bump into half of Aberdeen before I had even reached my seat. Everyone knew exactly why they were there: to have a ridiculously good night.
Our seats were Row D, Q1–3, and for the main stage they were practically ideal.
The view was unobstructed, we were close enough to properly see the guys rather than watching the entire concert through a screen, and — importantly — close enough to actually feel the heat from the flames.
We also discovered we were perfectly positioned to be absolutely drowned in confetti.
There are worse problems to have.
Then the arena ROARED
The second Westlife appeared, the entire arena seemed to get to its feet at once.
And I mean roared.
That initial crowd reaction told you everything you needed to know about the relationship between this band and the people who have followed them for decades.
One thing I actually enjoy about seated arena concerts is having the choice. You can stand and completely lose yourself during the big numbers and then, when your legs finally start protesting, sit down for five minutes without sacrificing your space.
In theory, anyway.
More on that later.
From the opening moments onward, the show moved quickly. Costume changes were slick, transitions rarely dragged and almost every section had its own identity rather than feeling like another song under another coloured spotlight.
And Westlife understand something important about an anniversary tour:
people don’t only want the songs. They want the memories attached to them.
The stories between numbers, the reflections on their career and the little pieces of history gave the evening context. It never felt like they were simply racing through a greatest-hits playlist.
They seemed genuinely aware of what those songs have meant to people.
Nostalgia — with actual production behind it
My biggest fear with legacy acts is always that nostalgia will be expected to do all the heavy lifting.
Put the band onstage. Play the famous intro. Audience screams. Job done.
Westlife didn’t do that.
The production was genuinely impressive.
The staging, lighting, outfit changes, flames, screens, confetti and overall scale made it feel like an arena show built for 2026, rather than a recreation of something from 2001.
Two of my personal highlights were Hello My Love and Starlight.
The staging absolutely came alive.
Lighting flooded the arena, the colours became enormous, and the bursts of coloured flame gave those newer songs their own major moments alongside the classics.
And that matters.
Because one of the cleverest things about this show is that the newer material doesn’t feel like the section everyone politely tolerates while waiting for Flying Without Wings.
It belongs there.
The show also incorporates drones, and I’m deliberately not going to spoil what happens with them.
I’ll only say this: the choreography and visual cinematography of that sequence were fantastic.
It’s worth experiencing without knowing exactly what’s coming.
The biggest surprise? Aberdeen.
There were massive production moments throughout the night, but weirdly, one of my favourite things about the entire concert wasn’t something happening onstage.
It was the audience.
Whenever the band deliberately stopped singing during a chorus and let the arena take over, Aberdeen was LOUD.
Really loud.
P&J Live deserves some credit here because the acoustics were excellent. Those huge audience-singalong moments travelled beautifully around the arena and made thousands of people singing the same lyric feel genuinely enormous.
I’ve been to a lot of concert venues, and P&J Live impressed me.
The layout works well, the arena feels modern and the sound was excellent from where we were sitting. For a big pop show reliant on crowd energy, it suited the night perfectly.
Westlife knew exactly how to exploit it too.
“NO SCOTLAND, NO PARTY.”
Predictably, Aberdeen lost it.
They also knew precisely which Scottish buttons to press.
At one point they ran through the usual crowd questions:
Everyone having a good night?
YES!
Everyone excited?
YES!
Was the sky blue today?
YES—
…oh.
No.
This is Aberdeen.
Cue laughter.
Those little moments were probably as important as some of the elaborate production because the friendship between Shane Filan, Nicky Byrne and Kian Egan still comes across as genuine. Their humour together feels easy rather than scripted to death.
The audience demographic became part of the joke too.
They acknowledged just how broad their fanbase has become.
“All the girls make some noise!”
Huge scream.
“All the guys make some noise!”
Almost equally huge scream.
Which might be one of the greatest demonstrations of how far the stereotypical Westlife audience has evolved.
And vocally? They still sound fantastic.
This was another area where I was impressed.
The guys sounded really good.
Twenty-five years into a career, you’re inevitably comparing live vocals with songs you’ve heard hundreds of times, and nothing about the performance made those songs feel tired.
I also loved how much room the backing vocalists were given.
Rather than leaving them buried anonymously at the back of the mix, there were moments where the women were allowed to properly step forward vocally — including Louise and her fellow backing singer — and they absolutely elevated the number.
Those moments stood out because it felt collaborative.
They weren’t simply there to fill out a chorus. They were allowed to have their own moment within a Westlife arena show.
And they delivered.
The B-stage is worth knowing about
One useful tip if you’re considering tickets for the tour: there is also a smaller B-stage toward the rear of the arena.
Westlife performed three songs there, which suddenly transformed seats that initially looked far away from the main stage into some of the best positions in the building.
They even handed four drumsticks to people around that section.
So if you desperately want one of those OH MY GOD THEY’RE RIGHT THERE moments, seats around the smaller stage could actually be a very smart booking choice.
And yes, underwear was thrown onto the stage.
Apparently some traditions survive twenty-five years.
Recent coverage of the tour has already noted fans continuing the long-standing tradition of throwing bras at Westlife performances. The Sun
Aberdeen clearly decided it had its own contribution to make.
The bits that didn’t quite work
It wasn’t flawless.
The biggest irritation was actually the seating situation.
Although the event was seated, people continually wandered toward the front and stood in aisles trying to get closer.
Venue staff did repeatedly move people back, so there was clearly an attempt to enforce the seating plan, but it became constant throughout parts of the night.
And that’s frustrating.
If somebody has paid for a particular seat and view, they shouldn’t suddenly be competing with a crowd of people who have abandoned theirs.
I’ve experienced stricter enforcement at venues including the OVO Hydro, The O2 and arenas elsewhere in Europe, and I think P&J Live could tighten that up.
Either make an area standing or make it seated.
The halfway version is irritating for everyone.
The transition to and from the B-stage also created probably the slowest part of the night.
Because the band physically moved through the venue, people near their route understandably surged toward them. For everyone else, there was a period of essentially standing around waiting while sections closer to the walkway turned into a bit of a scrum.
It didn’t ruin anything, but the flow temporarily disappeared.
There was also one deeper-cut throwback section where noticeably fewer people seemed to know the lyrics.
Suddenly, half the arena discovered its seats again.
I knew it, obviously.
Major fan privileges.
Interestingly, there was no interval.
Personally? I much prefer that.
I’m an avid concert-goer and once a show has built momentum, I don’t particularly want twenty minutes of people queueing for drinks before trying to recreate the atmosphere again.
Give me the show.
Keep it moving.
Done.
Others may disagree, particularly during a concert of this length, but for me the lack of interval helped.
The only other gripe wasn’t really about Westlife at all.
Venue food and drink pricing felt inflated, and the apparent inability to buy something as simple as a small soda was… interesting.
It didn’t particularly bother me, but enough people around us were commenting on the prices that it was clearly a frustration.
Twenty-five years later…
This could very easily have become two hours of nostalgia bait.
It didn’t.
And that is probably the biggest compliment I can give the show.
Yes, hearing the songs you grew up with creates an emotional shortcut.
Of course it does.
A few notes can suddenly put you back in a completely different era of your life.
But nostalgia only works for so long if what’s happening in front of you doesn’t match the memory.
Westlife matched it.
More importantly, they occasionally exceeded it.
The giant hits still generate enormous reactions, but songs like Hello My Love and Starlight prove this isn’t simply a band trapped inside its greatest-hits album.
The production feels contemporary.
The vocals hold up.
Their chemistry is still there.
And after twenty-five years, you suddenly realise just how many songs you know.
The DC Verdict
Twenty-five years in, Westlife aren’t relying on nostalgia to carry the show. The nostalgia gets you through the door — the vocals, production and sheer number of songs you forgot you knew keep you there.
And maybe that’s why this one landed harder for me than I expected.
Somewhere, the kid who cried because somebody stole his Westlife CD finally got to stand a few rows from the stage, covered head-to-toe in confetti, screaming those same songs with thousands of other people.
Except this time, there were drones.
And enormous flames.
And thankfully nobody stole anything.
Westlife might be celebrating where they’ve been, but this didn’t feel like a farewell to the past.
It felt like a band completely comfortable with its history while proving its newer music can stand beside it.
Twenty-five years later, they’ve still got it.
DC APPROVED
And if you missed Aberdeen — you actually get another chance.
Westlife return to P&J Live on Tuesday 3 November 2026, an additional Aberdeen date added following demand. The venue lists doors at 18:00, with the show scheduled to begin at 19:25. P&J Live
Westlife at P&J Live — 3 November tickets & information
